You should now be familiar with basic operations in MATLAB. These include

• Starting and exiting MATLAB,
• Computing simple mathematical expressions, and
• Managing variables

You should also be familiar with the MATLAB menu and toolbar system.
The chapter gives an overview of the various types of problems MATLAB can solve. These include

• Using arrays and polynomials,
• Using relational operators,
• Creating plots,
• Solving linear algebraic equations,
• Creating M-file programs,
• Using conditional statements, and
• Using loops.

The following chapters give more details on these topics. You can also obtain more information using the MATLAB Help System.
You should be familiar with the methodology used for problem solving, and the specific methodology used for solving problems by computer, as discussed in Section 1.7.

Table 1.8-1 is a guide to the MATLAB commands and features introduced in this chapter.

Table 1.8-1 Guide to commands and features introduced.

Scalar arithmetic operations                                   Table 1.1-1
Order of precedence                                                Table 1.1-2
Commands for managing the work session          Table 1.1-3
Special variables and constants                             Table 1.1-4
Some commonly used mathematical functions     Table 1.3-1
System, directory, and file commands                   Table 1.3-2
.Some MATLAB plotting commands                      Table 1.3-3
Input/output commands                                            Table 1.4-2
MATLAB Help functions                                           Table 1.5-1
Relational operators                                                 Table 1.6-1
Some MATLAB programming statements            Table 1.6-2